Friday, January 21, 2011

I am TJIC

I criticized Corcoran on the comment section of his article on the day of the shooting. However, on Jan 12, he posted a "flow chart" (his website is down, but you can see it on the RSS feed):

TJIC:Next question: do you think that a schizophrenic individual shooting up a politician, a judge, and a dozen civilians in Arizon served any purpose at all, or advanced civil rights in any way?
If you answer “yes”, stop here. Your conception of “useful” differs radically from TJIC’s.
Step 6: Congratulations – you agree with TJIC that the Arizona shooting was a tragedy, of which no good will come.
Next question: do you think that an armed revolution, including assassinations, is morally legitimate in the US today?
If you answer “Yes”, stop here.
If you answer “No”, congratulations, you agree with TJIC.

If he had said that on the day of the shooting, I probably wouldn't have bothered to comment.

Radley Balko: "But he isn’t remotely libertarian, an ideology where the non-initiation of force is a pretty fundamental principle."

As I've argued here and elsewhere, I think the most effective action at this point is time is massive, non-violent civil disobedience. Not because I think that violence against particular individuals in government is an aggressive initiation of force—as has been documented on this website and elsewhere, many in the government have been employing the use of force against people who have done nothing to hurt anyone else—but because (1) such an act will be widely perceived as an initiation of force, ignoring what the government has done to people, and (2) the net result will be a pointless waste, accomplishing nothing positive.
But at some point, if the government gets sufficiently awful and if peaceful attempts fail, I will change my mind about engaging in violence, as was done in the American Revolution, so long as attacks don't involve the killing of innocents. I hope like crazy that we never get to that point in my lifetime.
With that in mind: I am TJIC.